Tag: Massachusetts Hall

Rally the boys! Hasten the chiefs! Our Warren’s there and bold Revere. With hands to do, and words to cheer! ~~The words written along the top of the back bar in the Green Dragon Tavern in Boston.

And Warren was there. You just had to look a little harder to find him.

My seven day return trip to Boston was a pilgrimage I’m sure few people take. My husband and I were determined to find evidence that Dr. Joseph Warren was indeed still in and around Boston.

Green Dragon Tavern. The Sons of Liberty regularly met here. Aside from the back bar, he was listed on the menu with his fellows, who each had a menu item. We ate and drank at the tavern four nights.

Boston Museum of Fine Arts. The museum is massive. It was no easy feat finding the gallery where John Singleton Copley’s paintings hung. The painting of Joseph Warren hung on a wall between the paintings of John Hancock and Mercy Otis Warren. Copley’s paintings of Samuel Adams and Paul Revere were also in the gallery. The paintings are almost life-size and breathtaking!

We found John Trumbull’s painting of The Death of General Warren at the Battle of Bunker’s Hill, June 17, 1775 in a different gallery. It was small and somewhat faded and hung out of the reach of tourists.

The State House. Joseph was mentioned in a small exhibit on the second floor. What looks like a hacksaw to the right behind the sword’s tip is a doctor’s bone saw. In April 1776, his remains laid in state here until his funeral at King’s Chapel (the Stone Chapel) on April 8.

The Old South Meeting House. Joseph delivered two Boston Massacre Orations in the meeting house. One in 1772, and one in 1775. This was where the patriots met to build a revolution. To my dismay, the Plexiglas in which his likeness and achievements is etched, reflected light (even without a flash) and the camera shot was impossible to see. This is the pulpit from which he gave his oration.

King’s Chapel. After the Siege of Boston ended in March 1776, Joseph’s remains were identified and removed from Bunker Hill. The Freemasons made the arrangements for their Grand Master’s funeral, which was held in King’s Chapel in the heart of Boston.

Boston City Hall Plaza. The house where Joseph lived with his family and his medical apprentices was once located here. It’s recently been in the news. Joseph’s biographer and others are intent on erecting a monument on the grounds proclaiming that this was the spot where the Revolutionary War began because Joseph dispatched Revere and Dawes to Lexington from his house. This is a view of the plaza (where the event tents are) from the Bell in Hand tavern across the street. The WWII Holocaust Memorial is the green glass between the two locations.

Bunker Hill. Dr. Joseph Warren and Colonel William Prescott are the only names on the Massachusetts Gate. While my husband climbed the monument, I sat inside the adjoining building and watched the tourists largely dismiss the seven foot tall statue of his likeness, which commanded the attention in the sparse room. It saddened me to witness how obscure he really is.

Warren Tavern. Located a few blocks from the Bunker Hill monument, the tavern, named for him, dates to 1780 and is dedicated wholly to all things Joseph Warren. Of course he was never there, but the tavern was a favorite watering hole for his close friend, Paul Revere. We visited Bunker Hill and ate at Warren Tavern on my birthday.

The Clarke-Hancock House in Lexington. Joseph dispatched Paul Revere and William Dawes to this house to warn John Hancock and Samuel Adams that the British regulars were out. We were the only tourists there at the time.

Harvard. Of the three buildings that made up the Harvard campus when Joseph attended from 1755 to 1759, only one original building is still standing — his dormitory, Massachusetts Hall. Washington housed his army in the dormitory in 1775 – 1776.

The Roxbury Latin School. We didn’t visit the school where Joseph was a student and later a teacher after graduating from Harvard. There is a statue of him in the school’s courtyard that was once located in Warren Square in his childhood town of Roxbury. The General Joseph Warren Society contributes to the school’s annual fund. This picture is from the school’s website.

Grand Lodge of Masons of Massachusetts. We didn’t visit the masonic lodge, that houses a museum, because we arrived after it closed and it was our last day in Boston. We will visit next time and look for Grand Master Joseph Warren.

Forest Hills Cemetery, Jamaica Plains, MA. I believed if Joseph remains hadn’t been moved from Granary Burying Ground in Boston, where some of his fellows are buried, like Samuel Adams and Paul Revere, and a place thousands of tourists visit daily, history may not have forgotten him. But the magnificent beauty of Forest Hills Cemetery where he’s buried changed my mind. As soon as I saw the cemetery gates, I knew he belonged there. The cemetery is expansive and magnificent: full of beautiful gravestones, monuments, statues, and gracefully curving roads. Forest Hills Cemetery

The road where his burial site is located is called Mount Warren.

Joseph’s remains are buried in a joint family plot with his paternal grandmother, Deborah Warren; his mother and father, Mary and Joseph Warren; his oldest son, Joseph; his youngest brother, Dr. John Warren; and John’s son also named John. A glacial boulder selected by the Warren family serves as a giant tombstone. The remains of each person was, at one time, buried in their own grave. Except for Joseph’s, it appears that the original tombstones surround the boulder.

A statue of Joseph stands atop the boulder. The statue was erected on October 22, 2016 by the 6th Masonic District that hosted a ceremony where their Grand Master dedicated a new memorial to “the namesake of our Distinguished Service Medal, M.W. Joseph Warren” in conjunction with members of the Warren family. The flags on his grave site are new, so someone is visiting.

Forest Hill Cemetery Gates

Statue of Joseph Warren erected on his family grave site by the 6th Masonic District October 2016

Warren family grave site in Forest Hills Cemetery

General Artemas Ward is buried in Forest Hills, and there’s speculation that William Dawes is also buried there.

Vine Lake Cemetery. We traveled to Medfield, MA to visit the grave of the woman who was nanny to Joseph’s four children and assumed to be his fiance at the time of his death: Mercy Scollay. My husband gathered acorns from the ground around Joseph’s grave site and placed them on Mercy’s grave. The inscription on her gravestone was disturbing because I wondered if she was referring to Joseph. It read:

I know whom I have believed and I am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed to him against that day.

Mercy lived another 50 years after Joseph’s devastating death. She never married.

This was the last picture I took in Boston the evening before we left. Faneuil Hall is the brick building to the left. Samuel Adams’ statue is in the mall in front. Faneuil Hall was only two stories high during Joseph’s time.

I posted this picture on Facebook. “Good night, Boston. Good night, Joseph Warren.”

Dr. Joseph Warren is an important character in my award-winning historical fantasy novel Angels & Patriots Book One. Available on Amazon in paperback or Kindle eBook. Angels & Patriots Book One